Very, very frightning
by Hachiseiko
Summary: Spencer is scared of more than just the dark and Derek helps him cope. Moreid slash. Short fluffy drabble.


**Very, very frightning **by Hachiseiko

* * *

I don't own Criminal minds or any of it's characters, of course.

If you spot any grammar or spelling mistakes, please point them out to me!

* * *

Spencer hated this. It was horrible.

Sure, his job consisted of understanding, finding and hopefully arresting terrible criminals, murderers and rapists but that was very different from this. With an actual person – a mortal human made of flesh and blood, a brain made of gray and white matter – you could shoot them or preferably talk them down. You could barter and plead, trick and mislead them. In other words, there was always something you could try, not that it always worked.

Here he was completely and utterly powerless and vulnerable. Useless.

"It's okay, pretty boy. It can't hurt you", Morgan's smooth and soothing voice said for about the hundredth time that night. Actually, it was the fifth, but it felt like more.

Spencer twitched and bit his lips together as the entire bedroom was flashed in cold bright light for a split second. He held his breath and counted in whispers.

"One one thousand, two one thousand, three one thousand, four one-"

There was a low and ominous rumbling through the room and Spencer could SWEAR he felt the bed shake just a miniscule bit under them as the sound waves hit the house.

He whimpered pitifully and crawled impossibly further into Derek's arms, surrounded by the darkness of the room.

"It's not even a mile away…!", Spencer whimpered, his voice raising to a pitch it normally didn't reach. By their feet Clooney joined in Spencer's whimpering and attempted to crawl up towards the two masters.

Derek gave the dog a stern look. "No. You're allowed on the bed because this is a special exception but don't push your luck, buddy. Down." He then turned to look at the frightened, shaking young man in his arms. He knew that Spencer could be incredibly strong and capable. The older agent had immense respect for his younger colleague but Spencer also normally gave off a slight air of being inexperienced with life and fragile, and now it was all that was left of the genius.

It was early summer and after a long time of no rain it had all hit at once with the force of a thousand angry weather gods. Water had poured from the skies all afternoon and it wasn't soon after the thunder started that the power went. Derek hadn't realized quite how scared Spencer was of thunder until the storm of the decade was over them and it coupled with his fear of darkness.

"Spencer, ssssch…", he hushed in what he hoped was a quiet and reassuring voice while slowly stroking his hand over soft and curly locks. "It really can't hurt you, baby. It's just-… electrical discharge or whatever. I've got a lightning conductor on my roof. We'll be fine!"

That earned him a weak and shaky punch to the chest.

"As if I-I don't fucking know! I don't need YOU to explain lightning to me! That's why it's called an irrational fear, you moron! Irrational!"

Spencer's voice was more colored by fear than actual anger but Derek didn't care that the other got angry at him for trying to explain something as simple as thunder storms to the genius. He'd rather he be angry at him than scared of the world, honestly. And the cursing was a byproduct of that. The only times Derek had seen Spencer cursed was when he lost to anger. Derek had to keep himself from smirked at the memory of Spencer almost saying "son of a bitch" in front of Hotch. However, now was not the time.

Instead he sighed and tried something else. "Look, the power probably won't be out long… It must be a torn down power cable or something. At worst it'll be back up some time tomorrow."

All Spencer did was groan in a sad and weak tone and let his head rest against Derek's broad chest again. That didn't help him at all. He needed it to be not dark right NOW. Flashlights didn't help. They cast long strange shadows on everything and distorted the way things looked. It was even worse than having just the gentle moonlight shining in through the window.

Cloony joined in with the whining and attempted to inch his way closer to the scared man. His instincts told him that since a member of his pack was whining he was in pain or needed help. It made the dog restless and anxious to help. He wanted to lick his face and make him laugh again, like he usually did.

Derek pointed a stern finger at the dog, clicked his tongue to get his attention and just gave it a look. You are not allowed, it said.

Another flash lit up the room, way brighter this time.

"One one thousand", came Spencer's unnaturally high pitched voice in the darkness. "Two one thou -"

Before he got any further there was a loud rumble, obviously much closer than it was the previous time. Derek didn't even have the time to react and attempt to calm his lover down before he was latched onto his neck, whimpering into his shirt.

At the same time Clooney had risen from his place on the bed and started barking at thin air as if he could scare away whatever it was that was making that horrible noise and distressing his masters so. Despite his growling and snarling his ears were folded back and he didn't look very confident at all.

"Spence… Spence! Come on, man.", Derek tried, keeping himself from laughing at the adorableness of it all. "You're strangling me! It's not that ba-"

Derek didn't have more time than that before everything in their bedroom was bathed in a pearly and sharp white, as if everything had turned into pure snow. Light was everywhere and everything stopped moving. There was no sound and no movement. Even Clooney was frozen in position, rendered mute by the moment.

For Spencer everything seemed to have slowed to slow-motion, the clock of the world on the verge of going to a complete halt. It felt like even the dust particles in the air had stopped in place and waited with bated breath. The silence in that split second was deafening and horribly foreboding.

When the sound finally came it wasn't so much a rumble as the piercing roar of a dark monster rising in the form of an all-encompassing crackle. You could hear the harsh and sharp beam of light shaking and snapping with terrible force, sounding like something otherworldly, broken and wrong. Pure energy had been released upon their tiny world, who knew how close to them.

The sound twisted its way inside the genius' brain, through his eardrums and resonated inside his brain. All his nerve endings felt like they were on fire and every single hair on his body stood on end. It squeezed a hand around his heart and tugged at it, making his chest feel tight.

The moment afterwards was painfully serene and quiet.

If Derek hadn't moved Spencer would have probably never moved ever again in his life, being forever frozen in place by the terror like a statue.

Derek gently pushed the now shaking boy away from him with a hand flat against his chest and the other protectively around his shoulders. He drew a sharp breath at the look on Spencer's face.

"Oh, Spencer baby…", he murmured and stroked a tear away from his cheek. His expression made him look like a sweet little boy who'd ran into his parent's room crying because there was a monster in his closet.

Derek vowed to himself that he'd fight all of Spencer's monsters.


End file.
